Bell Labs Bell Labs Columbia University Overload occurs in Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) networks when SIP servers have insufficient resources to handle all the SIP messages they receive. Even though the SIP protocol provides a limited overload control mechanism through its 503 (Service Unavailable) response code, SIP servers are still vulnerable to overload. This document defines the behavior of SIP servers involved in overload control and also specifies a loss-based overload scheme for SIP.